D.A. Clears San Diego Acting Mayor in Probe

SAN DIEGO —  Ending a three-month investigation, the San Diego County district attorney’s office Friday announced that it had not found sufficient evidence to seek criminal charges against acting Mayor Ed Struiksma for “irregularities” on city expense reports he filed for three business trips in 1984.

City Auditor-Controller Ed Ryan, responding to the decision, said Friday that he will ask Struiksma to reimburse the city more than $800 if the acting mayor is unable to furnish additional proof of how he spent the money during trips to the East Coast, Idaho and Texas.

Struiksma reacted with relief to the announcement, made by Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller in a letter hand-delivered to Ryan Friday morning.

‘I’m Delighted’

“Obviously, I’m delighted to have it put behind me,” he said, sipping coffee in the mayor’s office on the 11th Floor of City Hall. “The resolution is the resolution we felt it would be all along.”

Struiksma was the third elected official in the city to be investigated by the district attorney in the last two years.

Former Mayor Roger Hedgecock was forced to resign from office in December, 1985, after being convicted of felony conspiracy and perjury charges, and Councilman Uvaldo Martinez was indicted March 12 on felony charges that he misappropriated $1,880 by charging non-business lunches on his city credit card. His trial will begin in June.

The Struiksma probe began in late January after a newspaper story quoted Jan Anton, a Centre City Development Corp. board member, as saying that he paid for a $65 dinner on Oct. 16, 1984, in New York that Struiksma subsequently billed to the city. Both men were traveling to an Urban Land Institute meeting in Boston at the time.

Struiksma admitted that he did not pay for the meal, but blamed the error on advice from the city auditor’s office to “reconstruct” the charges on a city expense form after he lost the receipts for the trip.

Withdrew From Race

The controversy surfaced during a mayoral primary campaign and forced candidate Struiksma to quit the race hours after the district attorney’s office announced that it would conduct a formal investigation of the matter at Ryan’s request.

Eventually, the probe focused on questions pertaining to the East Coast trip and two other trips by Struiksma during 1984 to San Antonio, Tex. and Cour D’Alene, Ida.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael R. Pent, who handled the investigation for Miller’s office, said investigators found several irregularities on the expense forms. For instance, Struiksma was paid $879.17 by the city for the San Antonio trip after he submitted one credit card receipt for $678.17 from a hotel and an otherwise blank expense form.

But investigators were unable to find any suggestions of anything other than sloppy accounting. “Is this person trying to steal something?” Pent asked. “If we can’t prove that, we don’t have the basis for criminal action.”